Yesterday, President Trump held a press conference where he suggested that the reason an army helicopter crashed into a passenger plane in Washington, D.C. was because of Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion efforts within the FAA. He also implied that the fault for this disaster lay with people with intellectual disabilities:

“We have to have our smartest people… It matters, intellect, talent. You have to be naturally talented geniuses.”

He goes on to quote a Fox News article:

“The FAA’s diversity push includes hiring people with severe intellectual and psychiatric disabilities.”

And then another,

“The FAA is actively recruiting those who suffer severe intellectual disabilities.”

He’s wrong. Although the FAA has instituted a program to hire people with physical and intellectual disabilities—a program which was, by the way, in effect throughout Trump’s first term in office—that program did not result in people with intellectual disabilities working as air traffic controllers. The Washington Post points out:

“Before being hired, air traffic controllers go through mental and physical testing so rigorous that few make it through the training. They have to pass an entrance exam, attend an academy, and achieve certification for every position they hold.”

But the problem with President Trump’s statement isn’t only that it is inaccurate and unjust. The problem is first, that his statements distract us from the terrible sorrow of 67 lives lost. And second, that President Trump’s statements provoke a defense of the value of people with intellectual disabilities. In order to refute his statements, I need to play into the power game behind them. I need to concede to his terms, terms that imply a hierarchy of humans in which some people are winners and others are losers. I need to prove that people with intellectual disabilities haven’t been hired as air traffic controllers. That they will stay in their proper place on the hierarchy.

Trump is correct that the job of air traffic controller requires particular skills and abilities. He is wrong that people with intellectual disabilities caused this tragic mistake. And he is wrong to look for a simple scapegoat that sets him up as a strongman and reasserts a social system that devalues the most vulnerable people among us.

Trump conflates identity and human value with achievement and ability and appearance and accolades. But our identity and our inherent worth does not arise from what we do. It arises out of who we are. And once we know who we are—limited, needy, dependent, beloved, gifted, filled with possibilities—then we can explore what we can do, what we have to offer, in this broken world of ours.

Trump wants to simplify the world into winners and losers, and he wants the category of losers to include all sorts of people who in his mind aren’t like him. Right now, we need to grieve the lives cut short by tragedy and carefully assess why this tragedy happened. Arguing about whether or not people with intellectual disabilities could become air traffic controllers only plays into a dehumanizing understanding of who we are. And it only diverts us from our own humanity.

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